In this report, we dive deep into the unique baby food marketing environment to find how the best social marketers at baby food brands build communities, engage new and existing audiences, and optimize their paid strategy.

For decades, corporate social responsibility (CSR) plans have been used by companies in varying degrees to participate in select charities and causes; however, in recent years, CSR strategies have evolved as an important way for businesses to connect with their communities, demonstrate commitment to core values and deliver on brand promises.

Today, 75% of Twitter traffic and 65% of Salesforce.com traffic comes through APIs. But APIs are not just for the social Web. According to ProgrammableWeb.com, the number of open APIs being offered publicly over the Internet now exceeds 2000—up from just 32 in 2005. Opening APIs up to outside developers enables many technology start-ups to become platforms, by fostering developer communities tied to their core data or application resources. This translates into new reach (think Twitter’s rapid growth), revenue (think Salesforce.com’s AppExchange) or end user retention (think Facebook).

Customer service has evolved from a reactive activity viewed largely as a cost center-based tactical necessity, to a proactive management task that can in many ways set a company apart from the competition. At the same time, the channels by which customers receive support are growing and fragmenting very rapidly. The telephone is still the primary mode of support, but is steadily declining as text, social media, chat, knowledge bases, email and online communities provide new avenues for customers to get the help they need. Some organizations are embracing this evolution by implementing technologies that enable them to interact with customers regardless of the channel or the device they’re using. This approach not only improves customer service, but also boosts the brand image and helps companies achieve broader business goals.

Want to rein in support costs without sacrificing service quality and customer satisfaction? You can. New social business solutions eliminate the traditional service trade-offs, providing an optimal combination of assisted peer-to-peer support communities, call deflection, selective escalation and productivity-enhancing collaboration. The result? Reduced call volume and faster resolution times, happier customers and lower costs.

According to Forrester Research, 76% of consumers are using online self-serve to find answers—more than any other support channel, including phone.
And they are no longer just looking for customer support directly on companies’ Facebook or Twitter sites. They are seeking help from their peers for quick and easy answers. Companies are recognizing this social service trend and are using customer communities as a platform to enable customers to socially self-serve. This approach can greatly enhance the overall service experience and reduce escalations to an agent. In looking at social service trends and benefits, it’s important to strategically think about the customer community implementation and planning process.

Read this paper from Acquia and learn about the underlying drivers for enterprise social software; key requirements and how Drupal meets those; how open source development outpaces proprietary alternatives; examples of communities built with Drupal and Acquia.

Social Marketing encompasses a slew of activity that takes place in social networks and online communities. The mashup of all this activity is a way for your brand to build better customer relationships, increase awareness of your brand and ultimately drive sales.

A lot has changed in the 10 years since Facebook first launched. No longer are social networking sites just a place where people can stay in touch with friends. Now, 30 percent of people use Facebook as their primary source of news. While Facebook is still the number one social network, Twitter, Google Plus, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Pinterest are all growing at steady rates and millions of users are accessing these sites from the palm of their hand with smartphones and other mobile devices. Download this whitepaper to learn how you can leverage social networking to quickly reach users and entire online communities to boost your business.

B2B Marketers can use online video to enhance the two-way dialogue with customers and prospects and strengthen the social relationship with online communities. Watch this free recorded webinar where experts from both online video and social media industries discuss ways to get started, capture ROI, and engage with online B2B audiences.

Extending social capabilities across your company can improve both individual and team productivity. With online communities, information is made transparent and corporate knowledge is bubbled up to where it can be used - no longer buried in email inboxes, hard drives or isolated in silos.

Investing in the creation of a Transformational State of Knowledge builds a defensible advantage in delivering great customer experiences. There are 3 capabilities your company will need to be successful.

Is email still the “killer app” it used to be? Social technologies and mobile capabilities are changing the way people communicate in the workplace. Many organizations are employing BYOD strategies and embracing social business tools like file sharing, chat, wikis and communities. In the past, email was used for storing and sharing documents and having conversations with groups. Tasks which are much better suited for today's social cloud collaboration tools. Email usage may be evolving, but email is not dead. In fact, everyone in the organization from executives to factory workers needs email to stay connected. And many organizations are moving their messaging to cloud to take advantage of the flexibility and cost savings a cloud environment provides.

Is email still the “killer app” it used to be? Social technologies and mobile capabilities are changing the way people communicate in the workplace. Many organizations are employing BYOD strategies and embracing social business tools like file sharing, chat, wikis and communities. In the past, email was used for storing and sharing documents and having conversations with groups. Tasks which are much better suited for today's social cloud collaboration tools. Email usage may be evolving, but email is not dead. In fact, everyone in the organization from executives to factory workers needs email to stay connected. And many organizations are moving their messaging to cloud to take advantage of the flexibility and cost savings a cloud environment provides.

Businesses are transforming themselves to participate in the API economy. But how do you rapidly and securely expose your business to this developer ecosystem? Attend this webcast to find out how you can define and publish your APIs easily using the IBM API Management Service — the new SaaS solution from IBM. This cloud hosted service provides a complete set of capabilities to create, secure, manage, and socialize APIs to internal and external developer communities in the cloud, without incurring any IT infrastructure setup. Learn more from IBM's product team on how it will help enable companies to embrace the API economy and accelerate business transformation.
Webcast attendees will learn about the following:
•IBM API Management Service capabilities, features and benefits
•Understanding different use cases of IBM API Management Service
•Pricing models
•How to get started using the API Management Service

Social communities transform customer engagement and provide an innovative way for organizations to extend their reach and provide higher value support for their customers, partners, and employees. If your organization seeks to gain insights from your customers and help them get the most out of your products and services, these case studies, ideas, and best practices will provide you with some actionable encouragement.

Investing in the creation of a Transformational State of Knowledge builds a defensible advantage in delivering great customer experiences. There are 3 capabilities your company will need to be successful.

Most enterprises understand the importance of listening to customer comments and conversations through social channels, and engaging and developing relationships with influencers and customer communities. But as the variety, volume, and velocity of social data continues to grow, many organizations are looking for cost-effective ways to use this data to get a better understanding and more holistic view of their customer. Social provides a unique channel to learn about your customer, and offers real-time insights like interests, actions, likes and dislikes that can provide invaluable behavioral and predictive data patterns. This social data (when aggregated with enterprise CRM data) reveals a more complete picture and understanding of customers.

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